Borough

East Retford lay just off the Great North Road, about 30 miles north of Nottingham and 18 miles south of Doncaster, in Yorkshire. D.

Derby by the Restoration period was ‘a very large, populous, well-frequented and rich borough town – few inland towns equalising it’. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 76. The mainstays of Derby’s economy were its markets and horse fair – which attracted buyers from London and further afield – its role as a county administrative and social centre, and the malting and brewing industries. Derby Local Studies Lib. DBR/E/106-7, Derby Fair Bks. 1635-49; HMC Hastings, ii. 128; Blome, Britannia, 77; Glover, Derbys. ii. 449; Anon. Hist.

The history of Bedford in the seventeenth century is now almost entirely overshadowed by its association with its most famous resident, John Bunyan. This is misleading for, although Bunyan undoubtedly exemplifies one strand of the godliness that was a feature of the town, there was much more to Bedford than this. The county town and only parliamentary borough, Bedford was easily the most important urban settlement in Bedfordshire.

Boroughbridge lay at the junction of the York Road and the Great North Road, at the point where the latter crossed the River Ure, some 17 miles north west of York.

Like Knaresborough, Pontefract was renowned for its castle, which dominated the Aire Valley to the south west of Leeds and the Pennine clothing district. The town lay close to the dividing line between the Pennines and the lowlands of southern Yorkshire and was thus an important market for the exchange of produce between the arable lands to the east and the pastoral and clothing region to the west. Its economy was based primarily upon its ‘very great market for corn, cattle, provisions and divers country commodities’. R.

Malton straddles the River Derwent some 15 miles north east of York on the southern edge of the Vale of Pickering – the region of the North Riding between the Yorkshire Moors and the northern boundary of the East Riding. VCH N. Riding, i. 529. In the early Stuart period, the greater part of the town lay in the manor and quondam borough of New Malton – so-called to distinguish it from the original manorial settlement of Old Malton. R. Carroll, ‘Yorks. parliamentary boroughs in the seventeenth century’, NH iii.

Knaresborough before the civil war was notable chiefly for its castle, which commanded a strong position on the River Nidd where it flowed from the Yorkshire Dales into the vale of York. Although traditionally a market town, a sizeable number of Knaresborough’s 1,000 or so inhabitants had come to depend on the manufacture of linen by the seventeenth century, and the town’s economy undoubtedly suffered as a result of the disruption to the West Riding textile industry during the 1640s. Bodl. Top. Yorks. c.4, f. 79; E179/210/393, m. 30; E179/210/400, mm. 37-40; Hist.

Ripon lay a few miles to the west of the Great North Road, commanding a crossing of the River Ure where it flowed from the Yorkshire Dales into the Vale of York. The largest borough in the West Riding until the enfranchisement of Leeds and Halifax in the 1650s, the town contained approximately 350 households by the early 1670s, suggesting a population of about 1,500. E179/262/11, pp. 14-17; E179/210/400, mm.

Lying some eight miles north of Hull and the Humber estuary, Beverley was the principal market town of the East Riding. A thriving inland port and centre for the wool trade in the medieval period, it was ‘much decayed’ by 1640, and its economy rested mainly on the processing of agricultural products and the trade generated by its fairs and markets. VCH E. Riding, vi.